Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 3

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Sec vs. S

The 'sec' wording on the albumbox was recently changed to 's.' The 'sec' wording already exists on the many album pages that exist, and that form corresponds with the 'min' used for 'minute.' I've changed the 's' back to 'sec' since I believe continuity is important unless there is a good reason to change something like this. If there was a reason that this (and the other albums pages) should be changed to 's', I apologize for reverting the edit and feel free to remake it with a note here explaining why the change was made. Thanks! -- Jrdioko 04:11, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)

Some of the albums by Rush were also changed from 'sec' to 's'. However, I have found no explanation for this change. In any case, it should have been discussed here before making such a template change. If one is going to change 'sec' to 's' why not change 'min' to 'm' to be consistent? I agree with your revert Jrdioko until this issue has been discussed. RedWolf 04:49, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)
I think this is part of a wider attempt to standardise to official SI abbreviations. I agree with you though, it doesn't look right next 'min' which can't be changed to 'm' ('m'=metre). (This change has been made to a lot of album pages). - Lee (talk) 10:52, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Once I thought about it I realized the change was probably a switch to SI like Lee said. Maybe since changes have already started to be made we need to discuss it here and come up with something final that can be applied to all the new and old pages. 'Sec' could be avoided by simply putting something like 38:42, but that seems much more confusing than '38 min 42 sec.' It would be nice to use SI, and I'm usually someone in support of standardizing things like that, but '38 min 42 s' does look strange. What does everyone else think? Any ideas? -- Jrdioko 15:10, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)

The options: (as I see them)

  1. 38 min 42 sec -- A wholesale revert and damn the standards.
  2. 38 min 42 s -- Bring everything into line with style but end up looking odd.
  3. 38 m 42 s -- Looks ok, but there may be problems with m = metre.
  4. 38:42 -- meh.
  5. 2,322s -- Maybe not...
  6. 38' 42" (KeyStorm 17:43, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC))
  7. Other.

I'm stumped. - Lee (talk) 16:14, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Given those options, I would choose #4 and then #1. The others just don't work for me. Since we don't use the min and sec stuff for the individual track times, I don't see it as a big deal if we drop it for the "Length" in the infobox. However, for some double and triple albums, we are talking a couple of hours which would then tempt many to probably want to use hours, minutes, seconds unless they give the times for each CD or disc. Would it really be an issue for people if we just used mm:ss instead of mm min ss sec?
This was my comment which I added on April 14 but forgot to sign. RedWolf 02:34, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
I would tend to think that to avoid future SI conversions switching all the album pages from whatever we decide here that the original "mm min ss sec" doesn't work. "mm min ss s" really does look weird and "mm m ss s" I'd say definitely can't be used. I'd say go with mm:ss, but that is a little confusing as to what is minutes, seconds, and hours, especially if some albums are longer than an hour. You could do something like 76:43 in that case, but that's even more confusing. I'm stumped as well. I'd say "mm min ss sec" is the best looking and least confusing, but I'm afraid that would result in future SI changes. Not that it's absolutely vital that we stay standarized with this, but it would be nice. -- Jrdioko 23:26, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, I think with the upcoming template namespace (which is live at the test pedia), it will be as simple as changing a MediaWiki page to update the format of infoboxes. Tuf-Kat 01:01, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
That sounds like a great idea, would you mind passing along the URL to that infobox project? I haven't looked around much at the test site. -- Jrdioko 01:20, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
See this edit window for an article on Belgium using a countrybox template. I'm not sure where the Template namespace is discussed in detail (somewhere at meta, but can't find it now), but my understand is that a page called Template:Albumbox will be created and at an article (say Abbey Road), one need only type:

{{Template:Album |Title - Abbey Road |Cover - Image:AbbeyRoad.gif |Format - LP |Band - The Beatles

And so on, thus automagically creating an infobox. (as the Belgium link above shows, the markup is somewhat more complicated than I wrote it... not sure why, exactly). So, that's the gist of it all. Now that I think about it, however, if the "min" "sec" notation is in the box on the right, it might not be considered part of the template by the computer, and would thus need to be entered individually on each albumbox, but there's probably a way to avoid that. Tuf-Kat 04:24, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
That's awesome. I've been wishing for a feature like this. —LarryGilbert 19:13, 2004 Apr 21 (UTC)
Sounds like a great idea to experiment with when it is released. -- Jrdioko 04:36, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
Strangely enough, I've already been playing with this over at test. The template is at Template:Albumbox (there's also Template:Review for the reviews). The code (from Aquemini) looks like
{{Albumbox| Title=Aquemini| Artist=OutKast| Type=Album| Artwork=Aqueminicvr.jpg| Released-day=[[September 28]]| Released-year=[[1998]]| Recorded=| Genre=[[Southern rap]]| Length=74:47| Record label=[[La Face]]| Producer=[[Organized Noize]], [[Babyface]] and OutKast| Previous=[[ATLiens]]| Previous-year=[[1996]]| Next=[[Stankonia]]| Next-year=[[2000]] }}
There's also a hidden Color (and Alt-Color - for dual types like Ummagumma) parameter, which I cheated with by making it default to orange. Length should probably be split into two though, min and sec, to make format changes easier. Unfortunately, I had to do a bit of a kludge to get the reviews in. I am very open to better suggestions on that score. - Lee (talk) 11:20, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Let's get back to the topic: I want to report that Bobblewik has been changing 'sec' to 's' -at least in many of my watched albums-. So I encourage everybody to change it back, since he took the decision for us all. Why don't we use the 'ed format? 38' 42" (I'll add it to the list)--KeyStorm 17:43, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I was not aware that this was under discussion here but thanks to Keystorm, I have been pointed at this page. I have been fixing the many inconsistencies in unit symbols and standardising to SI (e.g. hr -> h, km/hr -> km/h, kph -> km/h, mps -> m/s, kg/sec -> kg/sec, km/sec -> km/s, sec -> s). You will see at the offical SI website:
http://www1.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter4/table6.html
that the standard symbols are second (s), minute (min), hour (h), day (d). Trying to help.
Bobblewik 18:24, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

And we're pleased with all your metric unit corrections. I myself would do it if I saw any. But the fact is here that it visually dosn't fit. I completely agree with you, though, that it's 's', but I think we should wait until we find a consensed solution.
Thanks for your weeding. KeyStorm 18:32, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

For what it is worth, the format m:ss (7:42, 38:42) or even h:mm:ss (1:15:42) is universal. It is even enshrined in ISO 8601 (See: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html). I think 'Duration' would be a better word than 'Length'. It looks fine to me.
Bobblewik 20:38, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm not very sure. 'hh:mm:ss' is more usually used to express a certain point in absolute time (t) and not to express a time period or duration (t-Δt). That's why the most correct form is the scientific form followed by an unit. Also you can't determine whether 14:56 means 14 minutes and 56 seconds or 14 hours and 56 minutes (since we are allowed to ommit the seconds). For this and other aesthetic reasons I keep defending the M min, S sec (although wrongly abbreviated) and the M' S" formats, since they are the correct form to express time intervals and durations (for instance, in athletics).KeyStorm 21:56, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I agree that the correct scientific form should be a value followed by a unit e.g. ks, Ms, Gs, etc. Time is an anomaly unfortunately. To use the example of athletics, the format mm:ss is indeed used. See:
Bobblewik 23:21, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Ok, bad example :-/, but I'm happy to see you got my point anyway ;-)

Personnel

I was reading through the new formatting of this page (which is much clearer by the way, thanks Lee), and I saw that part near the bottom titled "Personnel." Shouldn't this information be on the band's article and not on the album page? Maybe you do need it just in case the band members are different for different albums, but I don't think "Personnel" is the right name. Also, in that case, what do you put on the main band's article (if the members are different for different albums)? Again I hate to create a mess with this standardization business, but I always like to see some sort of "format" that's recommended to use for all articles. Then again, I am mildly annoyed by the fact that every disambiguation page has a different sentence at the top ("Blah can refer to," "Blah has several different meanings," "Blah can mean one of several different things," etc., so maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine. In any case, I think personnel has to go unless that's the correct name for the members of a band. -- Jrdioko 23:26, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

In most cases, the "personnel" is much more than a list of band members. The band members should be on it, of course, but many or most albums are recorded with the help of at least a handful of session musicians, plus producers, engineers, cover artists, etc. Also, a particular band member may be a bassist, but may also play the vibraphone or cow bell or glockenspiel on a particular song -- may be appropriate on the band page, but is certainly appropriate on the article page. See, for example, Aquemini, which has dozens of personnel, but only two are members of the crew OutKast (admittedly, hip hop is kind of a special case, because guest rappers and producers are so common). Tuf-Kat 00:59, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
Ok, that makes sense. So is "personnel" the preferred term for such a list? I haven't heard that term used in that context, but I'm not an expert in music by any means so I was just curious if that is correct. Also, now I see that the list can be useful on a page where the personnel covers more than the band, but, back to my other question, what should be included on the ==Band== section of the band's article if different members produced different records, and is that the correct heading name. There isn't a Wikiproject for band pages is there (I looked around before but didn't see one)? -- Jrdioko 01:17, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
Nope, there's no WikiProject for bands as of yet. Feel free to start one if it floats your boat. I'm not sure if personnel is the best word, but nothing else strikes me as more appropriate. Aquemini has separate sections for performers and technicians, so maybe that should be more standard.
Your other question (what should be included on the ==Band== section of the band's article if different members produced different records, and is that the correct heading name.) I don't really understand. If a band had a changing line-up, that should obviously be explained in the band's history. A list of band members should probably include all members, with appropriate notes for those which were not a part of the band throughout its existence. Bands with many line-up changes over the years might need some special format to make it easier to see who was a member when, but I'm not sure how best to do it. It has occurred to me that for such a band, a tabled discography with albums in colors depending on which lineup recorded it might be wise, but I've never implemented anything. All in all, I'm not sure there should be any policy on how to handle it, because the circumstances will be different for different bands. Tuf-Kat 04:05, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)
Sorry for the confusing question and thanks for the answer. I don't think I have enough knowledge on the subject to start a Wikiproject for bands, but it seems to me if albums and songs are being standarized that it might not be a bad idea to do the same for bands. Then again, there are so many different situations that could exist with bands (such as what you were discussing above) that perhaps a little variation and flexibility is a good thing. I just thought I'd bring up the idea. -- Jrdioko 04:36, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

Albumbox colors

I've just added all of the album covers for michael jackson that were on the missing images list and entered them onto the relevant album pages. I noticed that some of the colours are set as darkgreen for the Albumbox on these pages and just wanted confirmation that the correct policy at the moment is for them to be orange???. didn't want to change them incase orange had now been switched to green as the standard colour.Scraggy4 19:56, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Orange is the standard color for "Original studio albums," but different types of albums are designated different colors. Take a look at the main project page for details. HTH, Jrdioko 01:23, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)


many thanks, I have now noticed my oversight. That's what happens when you work with blind people for a living, it sometimes rubs off.Scraggy4 16:47, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Are these colours sufficiently contrasting with the foreground colours for all viewers? I can imagine that readers with diminished eye-sight would have problems reading some of these texts on relatively dark backgrounds.--Branko


I was waiting for someone to mention this problem with the wiki colour boxes. As far as I aware my organizations policy is for all text to be made available in either Arial or Times New Roman with a font size of 16 as well as supplying audio and braille versions. All background colours should also be avoided if at all possible. Obviously very few articles are written with thought for the visually impaired (many older people also develop various vision problems which makes contrast a problem) in mind. The easiest solution is by making a text only version of the page available for all users to who this may be of help. Scraggy4 19:08, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Needs cover

After a message from user:Jrdioko on my talk page I was wondering if the needs cover page could be expanded to include other info. that users haven't been able to find, possibly in easy to use table form something like the following.Scraggy4 11:23, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

band name album name cover release formats release date recorded length label producer no. of reviews
Relaxed Muscle A Heavy Night With... ok ok ok still required still required ok still required 3
That sounds like a great idea. Move the /Needs cover to something more general (I can't think of anything great off the top of my head right now), and put all the albumbox info there. After a new article has been made, the user can go to that page, copy and paste the box, fill in the info, and then others can take it from there. The only problem I can see is if some of the more detailed information simply isn't available anywhere, but then whoever is working on it can just remove that entry. Suggestions?  — Jrdioko (Talk) 17:39, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)


I have put a possible example of an album / single information required box on my user page from the list on the needs cover page. This would allow all song missing info to be in one place. I thought I found a different page earlier that was for missing info but I can't find it now (sort of explaining the problem and possibly confirming the need for info in one place.) It would also have to be explained on the album & song project pages. anybody have any suggestions?? Scraggy4 00:32, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Album

I have turned the message at Template:Album into a hybrid opentasksbox and comejoinWikiProjectbox. Thoughts?Tuf-Kat 20:18, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

It's funny, I'd just been thinking of doing an open tasks box (Great minds etc.). I hadn't thought of doing it on Template:Album, though. Interesting... It might need a little tweaking, especially once Needs cover gets fleshed out to include all missing info. It might also be an idea to mention Needs infobox (which could probably do with filling up) as well. - Lee (talk) 20:55, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I've now completed entering all of the albums (from List of albums) by bands beginning with 'A' that have some or all albumbox info missing onto my userpage. It didn't take very long and if you compare against the Needs infobox you will see that just the letter A on my list is far longer than the whole of current Needs Infobox. I will continue to add B, C, D, etc so feel free to take info from my page or if you create a new page for the info let me know. Apologies if I am doing something wrong but it just seemed like it needed doing and I would like to track down all of the missing info. Help appreciated with this obviously. Scraggy4 22:05, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
My problem with this is that very few albumboxes are complete, and by including pages without albumboxes as well, you're effectively mirroring the entire list of albums on a single page, but with vastly more information per listing. It's just going to be too unwieldy.
My suggestion is this, (this runs slightly opposite to how things currently stand)
  1. Make Needs cover list only those pages without albumboxes (or covers obviously).
  2. Make Needs infobox list only those pages with covers (but no albumbox).
  3. Move the page you're working on to Needs info (say), shift the info you've already collected on non-albumbox pages to the relevant page (cover/infobox) and restrict this page to just those pages with albumboxes (by using this list).
We can then, much more quickly, go through the rest of the list pages and sift the remaining album pages onto needs cover/infobox as appropriate.
This way we get a progression 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> complete, with different people able to work comfortably on different tasks. Plus the first two pages only need to link to the page in question (like they currently do), so the sizes shouldn't be too large. What do you think? - Lee (talk) 18:22, 1 May 2004 (UTC)


Hi Lee, I would say that the
  1. Needs infobox to only include those without either cover or infobox;
  2. Needs cover to be renamed as Needs sleeve image to include those with boxes but without image;
  3. and the third page to be Needs more info or Incomplete infobox to include those with boxes but info missing.

Some items would appear on links 2) & 3) but 3)would give a list of all incomplete boxes whereas 2) may include complete boxes except for cover and some incomplete without cover.

Another alternative I see is to have list 1) as above, and forget 2) as the fact the image is missing would be included in 3).

Whichever is decided upon these pages should be clearly directed from Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums, Template:Album, Album, Music

I can also see advantage in adding options 1),2),3) or 1) & 3) and Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums, Template:Album as a See Also from each artist/band individual page. This may seem a huge task but all it would not take long to copy and paste. I could see this encouraging many more people to become involved with adding the odd snippet of info here and there. I personally did not find the relevant info regarding the project that easy to find and not classing myself as the dimmest person in the world I expect a few others have had the same problem. I still feel that some clarity needs to given on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums page regarding formats Cd/vinyl etc that I mentioned previously.

Hopefully these lists will soon decrease in size as we, and hopefullly others, clean up the pages.Scraggy4 22:34, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, it looks like we agree on what should be on 3, anyway. I'd suggest you pick a name and move it to a subpage sharpish (it reeeally shouldn't be in the main article space). I still prefer my suggestion (but then I would), because I see those three tasks - uploading an image, adding an albumbox, filling in missing info - as totally separate and distinct, and I'm more inclined to add a box to page with artwork already present (because I'm lazy). I do agree that under your system 2) would be redundant.
As for adding links to these pages, from Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums, Template:Album - definitely, absolutely, it would be pointless otherwise; from Album, Music - definitely not, articles should avoid linking into the wikipedia: namespace except where absolutely neccessary (I think there's a policy page on this somewhere). Same goes for the See alsos (this is also the reason why the list you're compiling needs to be moved). If they're linked to from Template:Album, then they'll be linked to from every album talk page, which is good enough. - Lee (talk) 00:39, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Album box necessity?

Okay, now I don't mean to offend here, so try to read what I have to say objectively. I have just finished adding albumboxes to all of the Modest Mouse album articles. And, thinking back, I really think they looked better before, with the info in the article, and the album cover just float right, like any other image. The albumboxes seem kind of unnecessary. Plus the text of the article seems to run too close to the albumbox - like there's not enough buffer space around the albumbox or something. I just think the articles looked better before. And why is orange the color? Why not something more standard like white or grey or wikipedia-yellow? Thoughts? blankfaze 23:08, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Ah, but you see, those Modest Mouse articles are little more than stubs at the moment. The point of the table is to condense certain pertinant information at the top of a decent-sized article for easy reference. You should really think about adding more to the article than removing the albumbox.
As for the orange - dunno, I wasn't around when that decision was made. I think it might be a little too late in the day to change it, unfortunately. When the new mediawiki software (1.3) comes, with the ability to use templates, it might be worth rethinking the colors, if it's decided we should replace the existing albumboxes with templated versions, that is (which I think we should). It might also mean making sweeping changes like that would be easier in the future. - Lee (talk) 23:34, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
  • I suppose I see what you're saying. I just think these Albumbox things are kind-of ugly (no offence to anyone). But Wikipedia is a community encyclopædia, not my encyclopædia. blankfaze | &#9835 01:28, 23 May 2004 (UTC)


A similar quesion was recently debated on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft. See The Table Format.
Bobblewik 18:55, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

New Skin

With the new skin, the albumbox is pushed to the top of the page instead of forming a bar on the right. What can be done about this?

Acegikmo1 01:17, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

For some reason, the parser isn't accepting the {{msg:albumboxStart}} in the first line of the table. I tried moving it to the template namespace, but that didn't help. Currently, the only solution would be to ditch the msg and use subst instead. I've been working on a templated version over on test (see Aquemini), but it's still a bit buggy. - Lee (talk) 01:29, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
It appears to be the skin's fault, not the album boxes', so why don't we ask the people who work on the skin to see if they can do anything about the skin to fix it? -- [[User:LGagnon|LGagnon Talk]] 01:41, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
This is not the only project suffering this problem with the new skin. I believe any project using templates for their infobox/taxobox has also ran into the same issue. I think the skin needs to be fixed, rather than us trying for a workaround. RedWolf 03:25, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
Not all of them are having problems. Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements seems to be doing fine. --Caliper 23:06, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
It's working for Elements because that project is not defining a table using a custom message. The Albums project uses {{msg:AlbumboxStart}} which defines a table using wiki syntax. MediaWiki 1.3 seems to be ignoring the parameters specified in the custom message which tell it to put a border around it and right justify the box. RedWolf 04:24, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

A workaround for the MediaWiki 1.3 bug is to replace {{msg:AlbumboxStart}} with {{subst:AlbumboxStart}} as suggested by Lee. I have done that for The Division Bell for an example. The drawback of doing that is not only do all the album pages have to be changed but then if the message is changed, the changes will not be reflected in all the articles that have been updated to use subst unless the article is edited and saved again. I would say wait for a few days when some of the developers get back (I hope!) from the USA long weekend and have them fix the broken 1.3 parser. Of course, with the dozens and dozens of bugs reported in the last 2 days with 1.3, they might not get around to it right away. RedWolf 04:36, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I have added a comment to an existing bug [1] related to use of tables within templates. RedWolf 06:34, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
The developer seems to have ignored my comment when he fixed the original issue reported by the bug. So, I have opened a new bug: [2] RedWolf 16:00, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Proposed category schema

Fairly simple - two "top-level" categories "Category:Albums by artist" and "Category:Albums by year". Each album page is then placed into two categories, "Category:<Artist name> albums" and "Category:<year> albums", which are then placed as sub-categories into the respective top-level category. For consistency, the artist name should be the same as the title of their article (in terms of punctuation, "&"/"and", use of "The", etc.) minus any disambiguating terms of course.

Suggestions, improvements, refinements? - Lee (talk) 16:18, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

The album boxes look messed up now. They don't align to the right any more (I'm using the standard skin), and they aren't "boxed". I noticed this happened after the Categories were added, but it may be something else, like the {{msg:AlbumboxStart}}. Can someone try to fix this? -- [[User:LGagnon|LGagnon Talk]] 18:57, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

See my comments in "New Skin" above. I believe it's a bug in the MediaWiki 1.3 template mechanism. Other projects that also use a template to define a table have the same problem at the moment. RedWolf 19:54, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I added Category:Albums by genre. When using categories with album pages, the image or table must be moved beneath the first paragraph to get proper alignment. -- Jim Regan 08:29, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I added a section, based on ScudLee's comments. The "Let It Be" comparison doesn't work at the moment because of the "Wikimedia Board Elections" notice at the top of each page, but that won't be there forever. -- Jim Regan 08:53, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I think we should hold off for a day or two in doing the changes needed to implement Categories for all the existing album articles. There are currently 4 open bugs in SourceForge related to Categories. RedWolf 15:51, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

The main one is 963343: Categories push right-aligned element left. As noted, we do have a workaround for it, so I don't think it's much of a problem. -- Jim Regan 02:07, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Schema Proposal #2

I don't particularly agree with the proposed category schema. If you use "Category:<artist name> albums", then what do you do with other articles that are not albums like those on songs? What about members of the group if a band or not a solo artist? What is wrong with just using "Category:<artist name>"? That way you can put all three of these types of articles into the category. I really don't see a need in creating separate categories just for the members of the group as I've seen some have done already. So, for example, I created Category:Pink Floyd to contain the members, the song articles and eventually the album articles. No need to go overboard in the first week of categories IMHO. We can always subdivide them later if it serves a useful purpose. At the moment, I don't think it would. RedWolf 06:36, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)

# I don't see why "Category:<artist> Albums" cannot live together with "Category: <artist>. As much as I see it, "Category:<artist> Albums", "Category: <artist> Songs", "Category:<artist> Singles" should be all subcategories of "Category:<artist>". (as would, probably, "Category:<artist> band members" for a band and "Category:<artist> collaborators" for session musicians, producers etc.). "Category:<artist>" would be a category for articles which do not fall under any of specific categories.
# We should also decide on hierarchy above "Category:<artist>" - should it all go into "Category: Musicians", or should there be specific subcategories created?
# Additionally, should there be categories for albums which have charted, like "Category: UK Top 40" or "Category: US Top 200" or similar? - Asn 06:57, 2004 Jun 1 (UTC)

(I'm a bit too tired to explain what I mean properly, but I'll give it a shot). This is how I see categories working:

  • Albums
    • Albums by year
      • 1970s albums
        • 1977 albums
          Never Mind the Bollocks
    • Albums by artist
        • Sex Pistols
          • Sex Pistols albums
            Never Mind the Bollocks
          "Sid Vicious"
    • Albums by genre
      • Punk
        • Sex Pistols
          • Sex Pistols albums
            Never Mind the Bollocks
          "Sid Vicious"
  • People
    • Musicians
      • Bass guitarists
        "Sid Vicious"
      • U.K. Musicians
        "Sid Vicious"
      • Musicians by genre
        • Punk musicians
          "Sid Vicious"
      • Musicians by band
        • Sex Pistols
          "Sid Vicious"

With categories laid out like this, if I know nothing about punk, but want to find out about the famous British punk album whose name I can't remember right now, and can't remember the band's name; but I can remember that their bass guitarist was famous, and I'll remember his name when I see it; I'll have a better chance of finding it through the categories if they are sub divided like this. If articles are left under-categorised, I haven't a hope. -- Jim Regan 07:31, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

This is something I knocked up (partly in jest) on Wikipedia talk:Categorization, but it sort of matches with how I wouldn't mind things ending up.

                 /------------1970 albums--------------------Albums by year
               /                                                        \
             /             /--Rock and roll albums-----Albums by genre   | 
           /             /          /     \                       \      |
         /             /          /         \-------------\         \    | 
       /             /          /                           \         \   \
Let It Be----------/----The Beatles albums---Albums by artist-\--------Albums-\
                 /         \                    /              |                \
        John Lennon albums---\----------------/                 \                 \
                     \         \                 /----Rock and roll--Music genres   \
251 Menlove Avenue-\   \         \             /                       \             Modern music
                     \   \         \         /  Musical groups by genre  \---------\  \
                       \   \         \     /      /                 \                \  \
                         \   \         \  Rock and roll groups  Musical groups-----\   \  \
           /---------John Lennon-----\   \           /           /                   \   \  \
         /                             \   \       /    Musical groups by nationality  \   \  \
       /                                 \   \   /                    /                  \   \  \
John Lennon------The Beatles members---The Beatles------British musical groups             \-Music
  \   \                    \                                \                                /  
    \   \                    \                         United Kingdom                       |
      \   \                    \                          /                                 |
        \   \                   British musicians--British people--People by nationality   /
          \   \                   \                                   \                  /
            \  Vocalists-\   Musicians by nationality---Musicians------People          /
              \            \                           /    \                        /
            Guitarists----Musicians by instrument----/        \--------------------/

How does that compare/fit in with other peoples' ideas? - Lee (talk) 14:44, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Great. Much better than my example :) -- Jim Regan 18:35, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

New Template

The Template namespace initialisation script has gone around to the album articles and changed the album boxes. They are no longer aligned to the right, and they are missing their borders. This needs to be fixed soon. -- [[User:LGagnon|LGagnon Talk]] 19:39, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That page does not exist. The infoboxes have been broken since the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.3. There seems to be a bug in 1.3 where it will ignore table tag parameter values in a custom message/template. I reported it as a bug in SourceForge [3] on May 31 and no one has even bothered to assign themselves to it yet. One solution is to do what we did in the Mountains project by editing the article and replacing:
{{msg:AlbumboxStart}}
with
{{subst:AlbumboxStart}}
I have already done this for Pink Floyd albums.
RedWolf 22:01, Jun 3, 2004 (UTC)
Ultimately, I'd like to see AlbumboxStart and AlbumboxEnd done away with in favor of a new Albumbox template that can just be filled in using parameters. I made a first attempt (see Template:Albumbox), but it needs work. In particular, there needs to be a good way to include multiple reviews in the albumbox. Maybe make a Template:AlbumboxReviewItem that can be fed multiple times into the "reviews" parameter or something. Perhaps a better plan will emerge once we all get more experience with the template system. —LarryGilbert 16:39, 2004 Jun 4 (UTC)
I had a crack at this a while back on the test wiki, see Template:Albumbox and Template:Review, with the results shown on The Fat of the Land. Unfortunately, with the current problems with images and piped links, parameterized templates aren't really tenable at the moment. - Lee (talk) 16:59, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Yes, a parameterized template would be the best solution but like Lee, I also ran into similar problems when I tried to make one for the Mountains project. Until this solution works, using subst seems to be the simplest workaround for now. What I have been doing is when I add categories to an album page, I also implement this workaround. RedWolf 17:26, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
I noticed that Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries has started using a parameterized template for their infoboxes. See Belgium It seems that they have worked around the image bug by requiring a certain format for their images and then generating the name in the Template itself. See the coat of arms and flag on their template, Template:Infobox Countries. It seems to me that this might be a good step to take anyway, to standardize our album cover images. Perhaps something like Image:ArtistAlbumNameAlbumCover.png (e.g. BobDylanBloodOnTheTracksAlbumCover.png). The main problem would of course be moving the old images to the new format, which wouldn't be necessary unless we used the template. What do people think? - Bgoldenberg 19:53, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
They get away with the use of images because they use the {{PAGENAME}} variable (= WikiProject Albums/Archive 3 for this page) rather than a parameter, so the file names, for us using their method, would have to be Blood_on_the_Tracks.png, or worse, say, Insomniac_(album).png or even Everything_Must_Go_(1996_album).png. Not impossible, but maybe not desirable. And we'd still be stuck on the piped links. - Lee (talk) 22:39, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I realized that they used {{PAGENAME}}, but I forgot that this is often not just the title because of disambiguation. This now seems like it would probably be too much trouble. I still think that it might be worth standardizing the name of album cover images, though. This would make it easier to link to album covers without specifically looking up the image and generally simplify things. It would likely be too much work with too little benefit to convert all the old images, but perhaps we should adopt a standard for new images, such as my earlier proposition, ArtistAlbumNameAlbumCover.png (e.g. BobDylanBloodOnTheTracksAlbumCover.png). Of course, the exact standard doesn't really matter, just that a standard is adopted. What do other people think of this idea? - Bgoldenberg 023:34, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
The problem with trying to specify a naming convention for album cover images, is that there's the issue of bands with long names and/or albums with long names (especially the latter). I tend to use the full name of the artist but there are exceptions and I like to use underscores in the names. If the album name is quite long, I tend to abbreviate the words in the name. On the album cover image page, I link to the album page. I've uploaded the vast majority of the album covers myself that I use in articles so I really don't have a problem with locating the cover images. RedWolf 06:49, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)

Promoting n/a

I would like to promote "n/a" instead of "???" for those fields without information.
Let me know what you think and if that can be implemented to the standard table. --KeyStorm 21:49, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, n/a is ambiguous. Someone not familar with the project standard wouldn't know for sure which was meant. I would agree that the ??? should be changed to something else but n/a doesn't seem to be the best solution.RedWolf 03:03, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

Quantity of articles

This is just for interest but:

I think there may be a maximum cutoff so there may well be more... Secretlondon 22:31, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't it somehow also include all subst:AlbumboxStart? --KeyStorm 11:20, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Using "subst" causes the system to replace the text in the article with what is currently in the template. Once the article is saved, the template reference is no longer in the article. We were forced to use subst to fix the problem caused by the MediaWiki 1.3 upgrade which broke right alignment of the infoboxes. RedWolf 16:48, Jul 2, 2004 (UTC)
And isn't there any way to fix that? Since I'm seeing most tables without borders and wrongly aligned while using the original AlbumboxStart. Should we maybe use both AlbomboxStart and subst:AlbumBoxStart in the table parameter line? Or what's better, couldn't the subst template include the original AlbumboxStart? Sorry if I sound picky or annoy with stupid questions, but I'm new here and I'd like to do things the best way possible while helping to somehow inprove what we already have. --KeyStorm 09:11, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I played around with using a template for specifying the year of an album which would automatically add a [[Category:yyyy albums]]. Unfortunately, trying to use a template parameter for a Category link fails miserably. See AlbumYear on test for the dreadful result. RedWolf 22:00, Jul 3, 2004 (UTC)

Compilations in chronology

Should compilations be included in discographies and in the last section of the album boxes? --Auximines 13:02, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Some say that articles for compilation albums are not needed, while others feel it preserves the consistency of the discography. The album boxes for Pink Floyd and Rush albums include links to the compilation albums. For legendary bands, there's probably a bigger push on providing articles on the compilation albums. For those bands who have released just a few albums and then their record label releases a greatest hits album, I tend not to create articles for that case. There's no hard rule that says you shouldn't create articles for compilation albums or link to them in the album infoboxes. RedWolf 21:55, Jul 3, 2004 (UTC)

British chart info

  • Everyhit.com is a searchable database of chart entries in the UK. This may be useful for people. Secretlondon 22:56, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
    • Very useful and very interesting, thanks. Lots of nice trivia and award sections too. --Bwmodular 08:13, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Fixed column widths

I've seen some painfully stretched and shrunk columns in some albumboxes. That's usually due to the length of some comment fields that usually make the third column smaller than usual. I would put a width="33%" in all columns (or at least in the first non-"colspan=3" ones). I have tested this in Rammstien and results were satisfactory. Should we add it to the example? KeyStorm 22:44, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Albumbox template

I've picked up the work of LarryGilbert and made a new albumbox template which is here: Template:Albumbox. An example of how it looks and how it works can be seen in the talk page: Template_talk:Albumbox. What do you think of it? Should it replace the existing tables? DragonFire 22:24, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I personally don't like it. It takes up extra space, and seems to be aesthetically lacking. I think we should just stick with the current template. -- [[User:LGagnon|LGagnon Talk]] 01:43, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Echoing the above comments I think it seems to be larger without having much more reason to be and I also don't particularly like how the reviews are separated by a gap. I don't think it is hideously ugly or anything but think that the current version is slightly better. I do like that you were able to design a template for it, though. This is something that I have always wanted and seems very useful, especially if we ever want to make changes to all the album boxes. I would encourage you to design a template for the current album box. If you don't, I'll likely try, but I'll be out of town for a few days. I would think it should be easy to modify the one you made to match the current album box. (I hope I didn't come across as rude or unappreciative; I just feel that your version isn't any better than the current version, except for the fact that it is a proper template). Good luck. Benjamin Goldenberg 06:12, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've modified the template so that it looks like the current albumbox, with the exception of the gaps between reviews (see here: Template_talk:Albumbox). I can't seem to find a solution for the gaps, using templates. DragonFire 18:31, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

There are issues with template parameters that need to be resolved before we can consider switching to using it. The key problem is piped links (there are a couple of others but it's been a few months since I was playing around with getting a template to work). RedWolf 23:30, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)
Actually, piped links seem to be working now, so it might be time to give the template idea some serious consideration. - 10:56, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

Ok, stealing heavily from the taxoboxes, I've thrown together a new albumbox template, with the results viewable at Template talk:Albumbox. It's basically just a tidy-up of DragonFire's, but the only visible difference now between the template and the current box is the location of the reviews, which are now at the bottom. It consists of 4 distinct parts Template:Albumbox, Template:Music review header, Template:Music review (& Template:Music review2), and finally Template:Albumbox end (which consists solely of </table>). Basically, each one just needs to be written down in turn, without the need for an extra enclosing table, i.e. there's no gaps between each template call like before. Since the problem with the piped links is resolved (see the Q link in the template), and the image problem can be worked around by using the full syntax (including resizing), what do people think about switching to templates? - 19:53, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

I would definitely like to switch to using the new template. However, I think we need to put it through some more rigorous testing to make sure it will work for all possible cases. Also, it would be nice if we could switch over the old album boxes to using the template, so we could make global changes. Does anyone know if this would be easy to do with a bot? - Benjamin Goldenberg 00:22, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I noticed that the new template uses HTML table markup and not Wiki table markup. Is this how all the issues are bypassed with using templates and tables? I seem to recall now one issue where if I used wiki table markup, I could not break up the infobox using multiple templates because the server would auto-append a table end tag at the end of template containing a table start marker. In any case, we need to do some extensive testing first to make sure it can handle some more of the complex info boxes with multiple CDs, producers and any other quirks. The test site should be good for this stage. If that goes well, then I agree with migrating to the new template. As for using a bot for migration, it might be doable to write such a bot in a manageable amount of time. We have quite a few people on the project though, so I don't think it would take all that long to convert them manually, although a bit tedious I suppose. RedWolf 01:48, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
Perhaps it would be better to test the new template in subpages of Wikipedia: WikiProject Albums, such as Wikipedia: WikiProject Albums/Template test, because the test wikipedia gets reset every time they install a new version of MediaWiki. It would be nice to be able to use these tests in the future in case we need to test other changes to the template. Before we decide on an official location, I think I will do some tests on my user page. Benjamin Goldenberg 05:32, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I have started testing the template on this page User:Bgoldenberg/Album Template Test. It looks good except for one major difference. The template puts the chronology in the middle instead of at the end. I personally think it is much nicer and more useful if the chronology is at the end. Does anyone know if this can be fixed without making a third template for the chronology?. Also does anyone know of some more complicated album boxes; I've been searching but can't seem to find anything very complicated. Benjamin Goldenberg 06:04, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Try The Wall, a two CD album with multiple release dates, track times for each CD and an album link that requires a piped link for disambiguation. RedWolf 06:23, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
I don't see an easy way to have multiple release dates or multiple track times. I have used a piped link in the other tests, for a Rolling Stone review and it worked fine, so I would imagine it would work fine with an album link. Maybe someone, such as one of the authors of the template could comment on the proper way of going about this. Benjamin Goldenberg 06:31, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
According to the Details section on the project page, you should only include the earliest date / track time in the albumbox, but then, since it was me who added that in, I'd hardly call it definitive. That would be one solution, however. Another would be to not break those entries into separate parts, just have "released" and "length" parameters, but then you would have to duplicate the yearreleased anyway, for use in the chronology, and you'd also risk the whole sec/s issue again. A third (and the best I can come up with) option would be to have two extra parameters "releasedmore" and "lengthmore", say, which just sit in their respective table cells after the other parameters, but are forced blank for all cases where they are not needed, so for example on American Beauty it would look like
...
 dayreleased=[[November]]| yearreleased=[[1970]]|
 releasedmore=|
 ...
whereas for The Wall it would be
...
 dayreleased=[[November 30]]| yearreleased=[[1979]]|
 releasedmore= (UK)<br>[[[December 8]] [[1979]] (US)|
 ...
That puts a little restriction on the format, obviously, but it should be doable. I'll test it in a minute. - 09:35, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)
The problem I see is that it we won't be able to change the time format on the albums with multiple lengths by just changing the template. I suppose this probably isn't a big problem since there won't be many albums with multiple times. The obvious change would to make two parameters, lengthmoresec and lengthmoremin, howeveer this might be overkill since we would have to write it on every page. Just a thought. P.S. I am moving my template tests to the project page, Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Template test Benjamin Goldenberg 18:33, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm suddenly reminded of the Sweetheart of the Rodeo albumbox, one of my own ill-begotten creations. Three separate track times in that box. - 19:30, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

I've put a comparison up at Wikipedia: WikiProject Albums/Template test of The Wall albumbox against the template (with the added parameters). Not much between them, except for the whole chronology bit. - 10:13, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

I tweaked the box for The Wall a bit but otherwise, now looks good to me. I think we might be ready to start using the new template. RedWolf 03:52, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)
Well, I gave the new template a go and have noticed a few minor issues:
- since the release day and year are separate parameters, when they are displayed together, the comma after the day is not displayed (if using MMM dd, YYYY date format in preferences). Why not just combine into one parameter?
- if there is no next or previous album, will end up with a strange looking [] displayed in those locations.
RedWolf 04:13, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

I like the new template, but I think that the chronology should remain at the bottom, below the professional reviews. It works nicely as a menu, and menus usually are most useful as footers. Acegikmo1 04:17, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you, as stated above. Unfortunately, I think the only way to do this with the current template features, is to make a third template for the chronology. I suppose this may not be a large problem, but it does make things more complicated. Does anyone else know of a better solution. (I don't know too much about the templates.) Other than that, I think it is probably ready to be put in to use. Benjamin Goldenberg 04:57, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone object if I were to merge the release day and year into one parameter (e.g. releaseDate)? Also, one other issue I've noticed is that if a page uses the new template, the image description page for the album cover will *not* list the page as linking to the image. RedWolf 21:27, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

The only problem with having a single releasedate parameter is that is you end up duplicating the release year information for use in the chronology. - 22:34, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC) Lee (talk)

What's the status on the template? I have about 5-6 album pages I'd like to do today or tomorrow. Should I use the template or copy the code from WP:ALBUM? Nadavspi 18:37, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Check out Template:Album infobox. ed g2s • talk 23:52, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Vinyl record" v/s "Gramophone record"

There has been discussion about merging the content of the vinyl record article into the gramophone record article and making the first into a redirect to the second. I'd therefore suggest linking "LP" or similar designations where appropriate directly to "gramophone record". Alternatively, if some folks feel that "vinyl record" should remain a seperate article, explain your reasons at Talk:gramophone record. -- Infrogmation 00:08, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Record label

As many albums released in different countries are released on more than one label, which record label should be included in the information box - all of them or just the one in the country the album orginally came from? Deus Ex 10:25, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Since this issue also arose when it came to release dates, the decision was to use the first date of release of the album in whichever country came first. So, I would say only list the first label. You could put the other labels and dates into the article body itself. RedWolf 16:41, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Albums and band's article, together or separated?

I've been working a bit with HIM lately completing information, adding albums, etc. and I noticed that some days ago, without posting anything to the discussion and even adding some albums (at least Love Metal) to VFD during surprisingly only 37 minutes Samuel J. Howard redirected all 4 album articles to the bandpage and appended them chronologically to it, as you can see now.
So my question is: is this the way supported and recommended by WikiProject: Albums? Or should it be splitted back again?
I'm afraid this is not the right way, but I thought I should bring the discussion right here to get the clear opinion of WP: Albums about this. -KeyStorm 13:09, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The albums should be in separate articles. Initially, album pages tend to be just just a brief description, track listing and personnel. Over time, the info box is added as well as additional information about the album itself (see the project info for more details). The band page should contain a Discography section, listing all of the band's albums in chronological order (which helps get the next/previous albums in the infobox correct). At this point, sometimes the albums are not linked. So, as for your particular case, the album info should be split out again. A message should be left on that user's page telling him not to fold albums back into the band page. RedWolf 16:37, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

AllMusic.com ratings

Ive noticed that AllMusic.com is listed as a place to cite reviews for albums. Not sure if anyone had realized this, but AMG's rating system is vastly different from most other sources'.

From AMG's FAQ: Our experts use a 1 to 5 star system (5 is the highest rating). It is important to note that we rate albums only with the scope of an artist’s own work -- we only compare a release to other releases by the same artist.

Thus, every band will have at least one very highly rated album. Maybe this sort of rating shouldn't be used in the tables. Or should be distinguished from the traditional sort of rating.

opinions?

Album template too large?

Discussion at Template talk:Album.

— Matt 03:50, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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